we're gonna party til we're pink
by AnonymousCreep
Summary: Zim really wishes Dib would just go away.


We're Gonna Party Til We're Pink

* * *

You're bonkers crazy, is what he tells himself.

He can't really help it; he really should stop talking to himself like this, it's starting to show how batshit bonkers he really is. Zim's finally lost his marbles, he thinks. You've finally gone off the metaphorical deep-end.

"Oh."

And there he is again.

"You didn't actually know you were crazy?"

"I'm not hearing this," Zim settles on, as usual, his antenna flicking up and down feebly. "I can't hear you. Shut up!" He doesn't have ears, or much of anything that the human pig-smelly anatomy might possess, but right now he kind of wishes he did, if only to plug them up so he wouldn't have to hear the Diblet's nasally voice.

"Well, I mean, you're answering, so you must have heard me," the voice continues, and wow, if it wasn't for the concussion he'd given himself the last time, Zim would've bashed his own head against the wall to get that incessant voice out of his head.

"Why are you always mocking me? I could…have my robot eat your brains or something," he growls, turning back in the direction that Dib's voice echoed from. His ruby red eyes narrowed in frustration. Shit.

He's gone again.

* * *

"You know what would be cool?'

Zim doesn't answer. He doesn't really have the energy to. Instead, he grunts, not in acknowledgement, but more a proverbial 'screw off' gesture. Diblet's been talking nonstop all day.

"If we finally got out of this dump. I'd even let you get a headstart if it meant doing something other than hanging around in this moldy dumpster of a base," says Dib, and Zim can practically hear him glaring back and forth at the menacing looking wires and pipes that made up Zim's base, his home. That twists a nerve.

"Dumb pig-brained Dib," he snarls, baring his exceptionally sharp teeth, "you don't get to tell me what to do."

"Don't I though?"

Zim didn't know what he meant by that. He was too tired to find out.

* * *

Gir is squeaking softly around the kitchen, grabbing a snack before he heads back to the couch. His favorite show is on, the same rerun that he taped to watch over and over again; some b-list horror movie called _Space Vampires from the Planet Redrum_ or something.

It's occurred to him more than once that his master hasn't come out from his basement in quite a while. He also knows that sometimes when he ventures down there, Zim never really seems to see him. He's used to being shouted at, belittled and the like, even if he can't register the rude things properly. There's none of that anymore. It's always directed at someone else.

Someone who's never there.

* * *

"You're flaking."

Zim narrows his eyes, but reluctantly relents to inspecting himself in the mirror. Unfortunately, the Dib is right; he is flaking. His green skin looks scalier than its usual smooth, rubber-like texture, bumpy and peeling like a molting snake. It curls around his scrawny neck like a collar and is currently working its way up the side of his jaw, like creeping fingers reaching towards his eye.

Zim knows what this is. He refuses to believe it.

Sometimes, when an Irken was under a lot of stress (or just forgot to use the cleansing chalk regularly, which was what Zim was recently very fond of fooling himself to believe was the cause), their skin would whelp and flake. It really was like shedding their skin, and later once it cleared up, they would show new, fresh skin where they'd molted. It wasn't like the celestial molt, when the planets aligned, and Zim's very bioessance was momentarily unstable; this was much less drastic. Still, no Irken invader should ever succumb to something like stress, as it was a sign of weakness.

And Zim was not weak.

"I'm not flaking," he seethed adamantly, more to himself than Dib. "I'm not. You just need to get your eyes checked; your glasses don't fit your gigantic head, Dib."

* * *

Dib would never find him here.

Zim crouched down low in his safety hole, his antenna laid back flat in aggravation. He couldn't believe he was hiding from the big-headed menace to his plans –wait.

Zim imagines a noise, his antenna flipping straight up on his little green head. There was hardly any space enough in the safety hole for himself, small as he was, let alone Dib; there was no way Dib could have found him here.

Eventually, Zim's antennae relaxed back against his head, his pseudo-ears twitching at every vibration from overhead that echoed through his little underground hidey-hole. Using one of his three bony claws, he squirmed to face on of the walls, and neatly scratched a line into the dirt. Leaning back, the little alien frowned up at his work. How many tally marks were there? He'd lost count at two-thousand five hundred and fifty-five.

He'd been here for so long.

* * *

"You really should get that looked at."

"When will you cease your chatter, Diblet? You don't get to tell me what to do."

"But don't I?"

Zim really should ask what that is supposed to mean.

* * *

Invaders are strong. Everyone in the galaxy knows that. They don't surrender, they don't give up, and they don't forgive.

And they don't, under any circumstances, cry.

Zim's face is stained pink –that's the color of Irken tears. He didn't know that. He doesn't know whether or not he should be intrigued or blindingly livid at himself for crying and knowing that. He can't even remember why it started.

He thinks it had something to do with the Dib.

"Stop crying."

And there he is. Again.

When will he leave? Christ.

Zim worries his lower lip and glares in the direction of Dib's voice. It's not dark in here, not in the base; Dib just moves to quickly, so quickly that Zim can't keep track of him. He can never seem to see him.

"Don't tell me what to do, human," he warns scathingly, "and I'm not crying."

"I think I've warranted the right to do that," says Dib, and Zim can hear him grinning in checkmate. Cheeky little shit. Maybe it was a good thing Zim hadn't seen him in seven years. He'd probably go on a long-overdue killing spree after the bloodbath that would've been Dib and his incessant chatter.

"After all, I'm the one who made you this way."

* * *

 **just a musing after a night of schizophrenia.**

 **-AC**


End file.
